Fault
by Acciodoublestuffed
Summary: Mr. French pays Mr. Gold a visit in jail to discuss shared culpability. Gold/Belle, Post Skin Deep


Disclaimer: ABC owns Once Upon a Time, ect…

Summary: Mr. French pays Mr. Gold a visit in jail to discuss shared culpability.

He's been in the holding cell a few days, not quite a week. Of course, he's made the most of his time—largely planning, meticulously, that wretched woman's end. The little princess had, over the course of their time together, noticed his… _bauble_, but she had thankfully not pressed the subject when he'd been lax to explain the chinaware. He shook his head; if she was there only hope, then Miss Swan had a long way to go before she would be ready to match her _royal highness_. He would be out any day now, after which he planned on making damn sure that Miss Swan would learn her place, as well as his, in this aggrandized purgatory. Not a total ruining—_not yet, at least—_but enough to teach her a lesson, like a child that needed a reprimand, like the child she was. Princess Emma. What a joke. Sheriff, his arse. He scoffed to himself.

"Keeping yourself entertained, I see," Emma Swan looked up from the paperwork she'd been working on at her, formerly Sheriff Graham's, desk. "What's so funny?"

"From my point of view," Mr. Gold eyed her from his cell, "I daresay quite a lot."

"Care to explain? Or as usual, are you going to refuse to answer?"

He smirked and, in irony, replied, "You know me all too well, Sheriff Swan."

She raised her eyebrows in frustration, or more likely, exasperation and, giving up, turned back to her files, leaving him alone to his thoughts and plans once again. He was just imagining the look on Regina's face as he strangled her, when there was a knock on the office door. As it opened, Emma leapt to her feet, upon seeing the identity of the man who entered. "Mr. French, I don't think you're supposed to be outside of the hospital!" the Sheriff yelled. He heard the sounds of shuffling, and he looked up to see Emma standing, sure enough, next to _Moe French_, who, ironically, came bearing cane in hand_. _"How did you get here?"

"I got a ride over," the old man's voice cracked, whether from lack of use or the neck injury, Mr. Gold did not know. He hoped it was the later.

"I've got to take you back. They're probably out of their minds looking for you!"

She started for the coat rack to grab Graham's jacket, but then Mr. French's strained voice stopped her. "You can't. Not yet, anyway. You see, I've got to talk to _him_," the man pointed to the cell, with the cane in his right hand—the one not in a sling.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," Emma added, with her usual inane face of surprise. Always surprised, that one. That particular trait would come back to hurt her sooner rather than later.

"Rest assured, Sheriff Swan, I have no interest in speaking with _that man_," Mr. Gold said the words cold, in a voice he'd once used to command armies, but now used to meddle in the affairs of a tiny town—_and this was supposed to be riches and comfort._

"Well I have something to say to you." Mr. French limped slowly toward the cellblock.

"Sheriff Swan, if you'd be so good as to do your job and get this _vandal_ out of my sight, I'd be much obliged," he said, though nothing in his voice spoke of obligation or petition for that matter.

"Now I have something to say to you, and you're going to listen." Mr. French turned, as much as he could what with the neck brace and limited mobility, to Emma, "then you can take me back, I promise."

She thought over the prospects of dragging the man out of the office, and paired with her continued aggravation over Mr. Gold's lack of cooperation and recent lawlessness, and she decided upon a course of action. "I can't believe I'm doing this. Fine, talk to him, but I'm staying here."

"_No!_" both men said simultaneously.

Emma sighed, putting a hand to her head and opened her mouth to argue, but Gold cut her off, "Whatever he has to say to me, he means it only for my ears, and if you're going to… _subject_ me to this interview then you might as well do it under my terms."

She sighed putting a hand to her head. "Five minutes. You've got five minutes. Say what you need to and then I'm taking you back. I'll be right outside, so I'll know if anything funny is going on." Her tone was threatening, but Mr. Gold smirked. The little wisp of a girl was as threatening as the morning weather report—_cloudy with a chance of scattered showers_—and had just about as much power.

The men waited as she made her way out, grumbling almost silently to herself. When the door clicked shut, Moe French limped closer to the cell—but not _too_ close. "I see she gave you back the cup."

Mr. Gold didn't turn his head, but looked at Mr. French from the corner of his eyes. The imp picked up the cup and set it to his right, out of the view of the former father.

A number of awkward minutes ticked past, and Mr. Gold heard the man swallow with difficulty. He smiled lightly to himself at the sound. "Look, I have no idea how you found out about… _that_, but you have no right, _no right_, to—to—judge me for it."

"Right? You've come here to speak to me about _rights_ and _justice_?" Mr. Gold shook his head, chuckling. "You know _nothing_ about what's right." The man measured his words, and not for the first time, he wondered if he should be keeping his tongue more in check. However, he didn't necessarily need to make sense to these simpletons—they'd fear him either way.

"It _killed_ me to do it."

The girl or the robbery. Like it bloody well mattered. "Oh I'm sure. It killed _you_."

"She wasn't right. In the head, she wasn't right. I had to send her away. She would've hurt herself. She tried to."

The girl. He was _talking _about the girl. Mr. Gold sprang to the bars—_his knee protesting, but his mind didn't register _that_ pain—_French stumbled backward a step. He hissed, "_What _did you say?"

"My daughter, the doctors came and took her someplace where she couldn't hurt herself."

But that _oaf _shouldn't know that. He shouldn't know he even had a daughter. Only himself, the queen, the boy, and the hunter knew. "Your _daughter_?"

The older man—only in this lifetime, _though not by much, _he admitted to himself—continued on, not acknowledging or perhaps not even hearing, Gold. "I just don't know how you _knew_. The mayor said no one had to know what happened to her. No one had to know she went nuts, _out of her mind _nuts, going on and on about those damn stories." The man fell onto the couch and put his head in the palm of his one un-slung arm. "I hated myself for it. I hate myself." He looked to Gold and continued, "but what else could I do? She'd even tried to kill herself once. Jumped off the roof and broke her leg. I can't even see her now. Not safe, they say."

"The mayor? Regina took _your daughter_ away?" His eyes went glassy.

"Can't even see her, and she's so close, somewhere. Locked away in some padded room."

"She took your daughter. It's impossible," if he could he would have grabbed the man to shake the truth from him, but the bars held him back. "That's _impossible_," he said through clenched teeth.

"Not a day goes by that I don't regret it. I should've kept her home, protected her from herself. She kept begging me to remember. She cried for days and days over some goddamned kid's book. I couldn't get her to stop, like her heart had just… _broken_. She wouldn't say anything to me. What else was I supposed to do?" He looked to Gold, for what the man could hardly guess, certainly not absolution. Of all people, not from him. Never from him. "And sometimes, she'd look at me like… like I was some kind of monster. I'd reach out and she'd jump. She'd flinch from her _father._" French shook his head as much as the brace allowed.

Of course she'd flinched. The bastard had her locked in a tower, doing his very best to kill her without ever touching her. "And she's in the hospital's psychiatric ward?"

The older man shrugged. "What does it matter where she is? She's _gone_."

"And the mayor, you told her about your daughter's… _condition_?" Mr. Gold asked, in a clinical manner, his voice sterile and without emotion.

Moe French couldn't shake his head, but waved his hand in the negative. "No, she came by during one of Isabelle's fits."

"_Belle_," Mr. Gold spoke the word with reverence.

Then the men were silent, the only sound in the room being Mr. French's heavy, wheezing breaths. Suddenly the father sat up straight, and spoke his words with a surprising strength, not to Mr. Gold, but to the space directly in front of himself. "I came here to say that you were right. It was my fault."

"It was all our faults." Mr. Gold said in a whisper. "I should have known." He then sat down and picked up his cup. They sat together, in like attitude and position, each staring at their own demons hovering with the dust motes in the afternoon light.

Mr. French broke it (_not for the first time_) standing. He looked at the rich man behind bars with the teacup in his hands. "How did you know?"

Mr. Gold scoffed, "You'd never believe me if I told you."

"And the cup, what does it mean?"

"Everything."

Mr. French grunts his confusion, but didn't bother to question him further. Instead, he stumbled to the door. He should have had more questions, but his guilt remedied what little inquisitiveness his not particularly sharp mind would usually have had. Mr. Gold was thankful for that at least.

He sat without moving for sometime. He should have known. He should have _known_ that bitch had been lying. She—_Belle_—was alive. Alive and, if his guess was correct, in full possession of her (_their_) memories. He would be free soon, and then he'd get to her, and then he'd get the queen.

At some point the sheriff returned, but he couldn't have said exactly when, for he was planning, and for the first time, in a long time, it wasn't for destruction.

At least not entirely.


End file.
